Hello,

I am tired of the trashing of traditional morality, which is now all around us. In particular, I am painfully aware of the very real threat that bad examples have upon marriages. The normal situation now is that people leave their spouse (and sometimes children), when the marriage enters a rough patch (as all marriages do). Very often, they live in an adulterous relationship soon afterwards and then parade their immorality and normalize it by the use of the word "partner." These and other situations are not only repugnant, they are extremely common.

I no longer wish to buy into such situations by remaining silent and therefore seeming to give validity to these arrangements. If I meet someone for the first time and she introduces me to her "partner" - what would be a good response?

     Thank you,

     L.M., Australia



M.T. Horvat and J.F. Mead respond:

Hello L.M.,

Thank you for your consideration in addressing your question to us.

In our opinion, if you are meeting someone introduced as a person's "partner" for the first time, you should simply say Hello. It is not necessary to make any commentary or remarks about the assumed living situation. What you can do, however, is keep your tone cool, remove yourself from the conversation as soon as possible, and do not enter into any social situations with the "couple." Without descending to the level of rudeness, your tone and demeanor will speak adequately for you.

In our opinion, this would be the appropriate way for a Catholic lady to act.

     Cordially,

     Marian T. Horvat & Judith F. Mead

Dear Sir or Ma'am,

Thank you for putting out truthful information in the wake of a society daily deceived by the enemy concerning homosexuality.

I am an active duty Air Force chaplain who is separating from it because of my call to preach and the recent "don't ask don't tell" legislation.

We are seemingly more and more in the minority, but we cannot compromise the goodness of the Lord.

     God's blessings to you,

     T.W.

TIA,

Xavier University, a Jesuit institution in Cincinnati, Ohio, is scheduled to host "Queer Week" from March 30 to April 3 of this year, according to the university's website.

The university says that the purpose of the event is to "embrace and celebrate the use of queer as an inclusive, unifying socio-political term for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, straight, transsexual, intersexual, gender queer, or anyone else who supports the equality of all identities and expressions."

This is evident proof that our Churches and Universities have been taken over by communists!

     J.P.

Hello TIA,

I believe that to have higher heat as one drills closer to hell is possible, as you implied in an answer to a reader. The Kola Borehole is authentic.

However, your reader said that voices were recorded as the drilling goes deeper, and I believe this is not possible. Spirits don't have voices. According to their nature they cannot speak in a way a tape-recorder can register. When they speak, as a devil in a possessed person for example, he uses the larynx of that person to say words that we can hear/understand. In hell, until the resurrection in the Final Judgment will take place, men don't have bodies, only souls, and therefore they cannot emit sounds audible by our ears.

By the way, this story of voices of spirits being recorded was included as part of urban legends. It would be good to inform your reader about this.

     Keep up the good work. I am one of your daily readers.

     M.C.

TIA,

In his retelling of the Battle of Lepanto, more accurately Kurzolaris, Robert McMullen states that "only the Austrian Habsburgs now stood in the way of the Moslem advance."

With all due respect to Mr. McMullen, that is inaccurate to say the least as the vast majority of the ships and their sailors were from Italy, primarily from Venice and Genoa. Mr. McMullen should consider reading Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley before attributing sole credit to the Hapsburgs and Austria. That is not to say that the role of Don Juan of Austria should be minimized, but the fact is that he was leading a largely Italian force as even the galleys in Spanish service were crewed by Italian sailors.

     Regards,

     M.M.

Dear Sirs,

Blessings for you and your website.

Reading the comments made by the late Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira regarding Saint Charles Borromeo, I did not find the date of his beatification.

By any chance do you know whether or not the date of the beatification of Saint Charles Borromeo occurred in 1602 and was made by His Holiness Clement VIII?

Thank you in advance for this information.

     Regards,

     E.S.T.



TIA responds:

Dear E.S.T.,

You can find different versions on the Internet about the date of beatification of St. Charles Borromeo. Here is how the Catholic Encyclopedia presents what happened after his death:

"Devotion to him as a saint was at once shown and gradually grew, and the Milanese kept his anniversary as if he were canonized. This veneration at first private became universal, and after 1601 Cardinal Baronius wrote that it was no longer necessary to keep his anniversary by a Requiem Mass and that the solemn Mass of the day should be sung. Then materials were collected for his canonization and processes were begun at Milan, Pavia, Bologna and other places. In 1604 the cause was sent to the Congregation of the Rites. Finally, 1 November 1610, Paul V solemnly canonized Charles Borromeo, and fixed his feast day for the fourth day of November." (New York: Encyclopedia Press, 1908, vol. III, p. 624)

Almost the same report can be found in Butler's Live of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Saints. The two significant additions are:

• Cardinal Baronius wrote the letter "in 1601," instead of "after 1601" as stated above;
  
  
• Baronius, who was the confessor of Clement VIII, sent the letter as an order of that Pope (St. Bonaventure Publications, vol. IV, p. 171).

Therefore, it seems very much like an official process of beatification did not take place after Cardinal Charles Borromeo's death. If these sources are accurate, as they habitually are, the order of Pope Clement VIII transmitted by a letter of Cardinal Baronius authorizing a solemn Mass to be said on the anniversary of Charles Borromeo's death is what is considered to be his "beatification."

We hope this will answer your doubt.

     Cordially,

     TIA correspondence desk

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